For years, Germans have liked to take a winter vacation in south Florida or the Caribbean; you can include the Bahamas as well. (Maybe even Bermuda.) I agree with Peach December 1st or 2nd is too early. And the 3rd would only be the 22nd day of filming, when most Races are 22-23 days.

I use the "if it's an Amazing Race finale, the final flight must be nonstop" theory. This may not be totally accurate, but it does work most of the time. It allows teams to NOT be sighted changing planes. So I looked at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Prestwick (it used to have nonstop flights to the U.S. but not today) and Manchester. Here is what I found (note that several others had found parts of this and reported them previously):

EDI EWR UA97 1034 1417

GLA EWR UA27 0938 1137 (just landed ahead of schedule and first one from this entire group to do so)

IF they are in Belfast, there is an early morning flight to Manchester. Teams then could connect to flights to NYC/Newark, Chicago or Philadelphia. Since they were in NYC in TAR21, I would think that is not an option. The Chicago and Philadelphia arrive with lots of daylight filming time available.